Nicolas Bijan has a theory about what ails luxury today—and it begins with a paradox. “I think customers who are used to shopping with even the best luxury brands are being underserved now, and that means there’s a huge gap in the market,” said the managing director of Rodeo Drive’s storied House of Bijan, the appointment-only boutique founded by his father, Bijan Pakzad, in 1976. “The problem is that true luxury can’t be done for hundreds of thousands of people.”
Where other brands have retreated to tighter door policies and steeper prices, the younger Bijan has built something categorically different: a members-only model for his NB44 clothing label. Each member pays an annual subscription fee of $12,000, granting access to an app through which they may order from each season’s full collection of opulent Italian-made menswear—”stealth wealth,” as he called it. Stylists are on hand to assist with selection or to fulfill bespoke requests for clients who wish to be more involved creatively. All items are then shipped anywhere in the world with no obligation to buy.
NB44 currently counts its membership in the “low triple digits,” said Bijan, with a ceiling set at 2,000. The waiting list already runs several thousand names long. New memberships are allocated each season by referral, after the prospective candidate has sat for an interview by Zoom. Bijan insisted that, however counter-intuitive it may seem, deliberately limiting one’s audience is precisely the point when customers spend, on average, $100,000 a year—and some in excess of $1 million. It is a philosophy that allows Bijan to concentrate on the few rather than chase the many.
But what, precisely, are they paying for? It is not simply the clothing, Bijan argues—however distinguished its pedigree, sitting comfortably in the lux, understated tradition of Loro Piana or Brunello Cucinelli. Nor is it mere bragging rights, though he concedes that holds its own appeal. What is drawing royal family members and Silicon Valley executives to NB44, he insists, is the standard of service. All garments, for instance, come with a lifetime guarantee.
The members-only model, reckons Andrew Pavoni, is poised to expand—propelled in no small part by the maturation of digital platforms sophisticated enough to support any brand with a sufficiently distinct point of view. Pavoni, a former e-commerce executive with Meta, is the co-founder of Redan, a US-based golfwear and golf events brand available on a members-only basis.
As with NB44, prospective members (capped in the US at under 1,000) must inquire or be referred, submit to a committee review, and then sit for an interview. The subscription fee is available on application; Pavoni declined to be precise but places it in the several thousands of dollars.
“It’s no different to the process used to become a member of a country club, for example. But this is a golf society, for people who are fanatical about the sport, who want to be around people who feel the same,” argued Pavoni. “Redan isn’t for everyone, but what matters is the shared mindset – which is that all of our members want things that are very considered. And those are hard to find these days.”
For Redan, that means golfwear with the sun-drenched, unhurried spirit of Arnold Palmer in the 1950s—Pavoni, too, citing Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli as touchstones. The events calendar runs from multi-day rounds at some of the world’s most coveted courses to dinners, arts and culture gatherings, and beyond.
This membership model is not, it should be noted, the exclusive province of new entrants. From Britain comes Mile, an app-based retailer of heavily discounted past-season and end-of-line designer clothing and homewares operating on three subscription tiers, each unlocking a broader roster of brands and a greater number of monthly purchases—topping out at 25.
For the labels involved, from Margiela to Missoni, Lanvin to, with a certain irony, Brunello Cucinelli, with more being added continuously, it is a controlled, prestigious, and quietly convenient means of managing inventory. For members, it is an upfront investment made in the confident expectation of greater returns. The logic, like the access, is simple: you do have to be in the club.
